On today’s Remnant , recorded in the wilds of Oklahoma, Jonah once again attempts to fuse the weekend Ruminant format with that of a supplemental episode. He begins by elaborating on his pro-life views and what abortion law would look like if he were made czar for a day. Afterward, a nerdtastic dive into the morass of intellectual history begins, as Jonah uses an extract from The Tyranny of Clichés (which is still available from all good book sellers, hint-hint) to explore what separation of chu...
Jun 24, 2021•44 min•Ep. 364
Conservative journalism has changed markedly since John Podhoretz began his career at the Washington Times in the early 1980s. When Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story in 1998, it was clear that things would never be the same. On today’s episode of The Hangover , John joins Chris Stirewalt to explore how the changing media ecosystem contributed to Donald Trump’s election in 2016. The pair reflect on the creation of The Weekly Standard , electoral politics in the Clinton and Obama years, ...
Jun 24, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 369
Scott Winship, director of poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Jonah to discuss the history of poverty in the United States. The pair begin by digging into a new report from Scott and four of his peers that explores issues of black vs. white inequality, before they turn to examining potential solutions to these disparities. Is the success sequence outdated? Should America be based on bourgeois morality? And will Jonah ever forgive Scott for collaborating with scholars at ...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 363
Fair warning: Eating styrofoam may prove more constructive than listening to today’s drive-time Remnant , which contains even less substance than your average Seinfeld episode. Jonah (scourge of baggage agents across America), Ryan (softball hero of the think-tank league and true retainer to The Remnant ’s legacy), Guy (who contributed nothing to this episode because “Talkin’ Softball” was stuck in his head), and Nick (full-time Renfield to Jonah’s Dracula) reunite to explore the pointlessness o...
Jun 19, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 362
After several years worth of appearances, David Bahnsen (managing partner and chief investment officer at the Bahnsen Group) finally comes on to talk about his main gig: how money works. It only took five whole shows for Jonah to stop asking him about the postmillenial view about how the world’s going to end. But what better time to start asking about the economy than now, as the national conversation turns to taxing the rich, reopening the economy after a year and a half, and whether or not we’...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 361
While it’s true that Chris Stirewalt came to perform an autopsy on the GOP’s 2020 election strategy and results, it’s worth pointing out that “the GOP” as a rule didn’t do all that badly in 2020 – the real problem was Donald Trump. Given this state of affairs, Chris decided to reverse course momentarily by speaking to Parker Poling, the 2019-2020 executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee and one of the primary architects of the GOP strategy for congressional elections...
Jun 17, 2021•54 min•Ep. 365
Recorded in anticipation of the change of government that Israel has undergone, Jonah brought back one of his oldest friends Tevi Troy, now a fresh face at the Bipartisan Policy Center. The pair discusses the differences between our chaos-filled presidential system and Israel’s chaos-filled parliamentary system, Bibi Netanyahu’s legacy, and why, in a world filled with limitless technological delights, Hollywood’s blockbuster movies are just so bad. Show Notes: - Tevi’s new gig - How do different...
Jun 15, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 360
Jonah returns to the classic Ruminant format for the end of the week, which turned out to be a rather newsy, strange sequence of days. From Jeffrey Toobin’s seminal moment (not the one you’re thinking of), to Kamala Harris’ Skeletor-like tactic for dodging questions, all the way to a story about taxation that Jonah thinks has more going on in it than most people think (it may even break “one of the most sacred compacts of government”), this episode brings us reeling back through the mists of tim...
Jun 12, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 359
The Remnant gets rank today as Josh Kraushaar, one of Jonah’s favorite party-obsessive pundits, returns to discuss everything electoral. As Jonah has mentioned more than a few times in recent months, America now has two minority parties, both of which seem to be trying to out-crazy the other. In distinctly wonky fashion, Josh explores why this is the case, and what the future holds for a country with two moons and no sun. Will the GOP ever be rid of Trump’s influence? Why do Democrats keep using...
Jun 10, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 358
NBC’s Steve Kornacki saw his star shine a little brighter on November 3rd, 2020 and the succeeding weeks as he walked Americans through the results of a long, arduous, and oftentimes confusing election. But Kornacki has been providing that kind of astute analysis for a long time, and he’s bringing it to this episode of The Hangover to discuss how our changing electorate has contributed to the sense of political chaos from the 90s until now. In a political culture where polling seems less and les...
Jun 10, 2021•55 min•Ep. 361
In a world increasingly subjected to discussions of Jewish space lasers, fake birth certificates, and luciferian pedophile cabals, the truth could use a spirited defense. Jonathan Rauch, whose work Jonah has cited on countless occasions, finally appears on The Remnant today to offer exactly that. The two discuss Jonathan’s new book, The Constitution of Knowledge , which explores how all Americans can defend free inquiry and objective reality. Are trolling and propaganda as American as apple pie?...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 357
You wanted the best and you got the best: the hottest FM radio imitation in the world, Friday’s drive-time Ruminant . Feast your ears on the third installment of this curio, as Jonah (unquestioned ruler of the fun side of The Dispatch ), Ryan (cicada sous chef and alien aficionado), Guy (unofficial American and classic Simpsons obsessive), and Nick (as good a Straussian as Michael Jordan was a baseball player) join forces to save America from Michael Moore’s invasive telescope. Some serious pund...
Jun 05, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 356
In his younger and more vulnerable years, Jonah had a minor obsession with criminology (for no reason in particular, he says). Today, he rekindles that old passion by talking to Shawn Bushway, a scholar at the University at Albany and the RAND Corporation, about the history of crime in America. The pair begins by exploring whether crime is currently on the rise, before launching into a supremely wonky discussion of cities, statistics, and the root causes of criminal behavior. Is the broken windo...
Jun 03, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 355
Chris Stirewalt’s third guest is AEI Fellow and Washington Free Beacon founder Matthew Continetti, who gives voice to the story of the GOP’s ascendant populism from the historical perspective of the American right and the conservative movement. As Matt says, while Trump may have proved the usefulness of populism as a last-ditch electoral strategy, the long-form history of right-wing populism shows that “apocalypticism is a feature, or even the dark side, of populist movements.” By Matt’s lights,...
Jun 03, 2021•56 min•Ep. 357
Has conservatism always been a grift? Not according to Jonah and today’s guest, the illustrious David French. The pair ascend through various levels of wonkery, beginning with an assessment of critical race theory’s philosophical origins and ending with an exploration of superhero morality. Along the way, they discuss First Amendment jurisprudence, crippling video game addictions, and the ongoing debate over whether Army of the Dead is actually worth watching. To learn if David is secretly a sup...
Jun 01, 2021•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 354
Only those who own ties imprinted with portraits of Burke and Hayek should tune in for today’s Ruminant , which sees Jonah’s philosophical rumination reach dangerous instability. After assessing the increasingly credible COVID-19 lab-leak theory (and remembering the time Trump suggested using “the heat and the light” to cure the virus), Jonah examines what the debate over woke corporations reveals about the state of the conservative movement. He then dives headfirst into the morass of intellectu...
May 29, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 353
With a country split practically down the middle when it comes to politics, it’s a truism that the GOP needs to broaden its base if it wants to win elections. But it’s hard to make progress when the party’s leadership is struggling to make heads or tails of its own voters, let alone outsiders. Republicans could stand to take a few lessons from former Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, who was the House Majority Leader for the 112th Congress. Cantor tells The Dispatch ’s Chris Stirewalt that he developed...
May 27, 2021•59 min•Ep. 354
The Hangover begins with Richard Brookhiser (American historian and longtime editor at National Review ) making a statement that is both clear and simple and yet seems like a revolutionary point to be made among Republicans: “Trump had his day, but it passed.” The question remains, why aren’t they acting like it? Furthermore, how did the Republican grassroots go from Tea Partiers tidying up after themselves on the National Mall to rioters breaking into the Capitol in the space of just over a dec...
May 27, 2021•41 min•Ep. 353
The GOP went from total control of the White House and Congress to being swept out of power in just four years—the shortest time span in almost 70 years. What the heck happened to the GOP? We can think of a few things. No matter where you land on policy issues, or what your personal feelings about the Republican Party are, it would be a great benefit to the GOP to have a post-election autopsy to understand what went wrong in the party’s last four punch-drunk years. But in their current hangover,...
May 27, 2021•14 min•Ep. 352
Fan-favorite Jonah soundalike Chris Stirewalt is back for a Remnant so nerdtastic that even Joe Biden could mock its lack of coolness. With antisemitic attacks on the rise, the GOP resisting a January 6 commission, and primaries continuing to exist, there’s plenty for Dr. Stirewalt to kvetch about, and Jonah has enough Hayek references on hand to join him. Yet Chris has more to reveal than his disdain for the common good. Starting this week, he’ll be hosting a new podcast focused on the history ...
May 25, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 352
This weekend’s Ruminant sees Jonah “feeling particularly Remnant-y,” which means he’s leaned out of the punditry and into the historical eggheadery. That includes the history of the term “Jewish,” (why don’t we just say that someone is “a Jew,” and if you do, why does it sound like a slur?) the history of The Remnant ’s title, and more. But at the end of it all, one question remains: Is Jonah a superfluous man? Show notes: - Joe Scarborough was very angry - DarkSide is at least somewhat honest -...
May 22, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 351
Today’s Remnant combines features of both a weekend Ruminant and a “supplemental” episode, like the program’s recent incursion into social Darwinism. Jonah begins with further ruminations from his Wednesday “news”letter, replete with the observations that certain opponents of Israel veer into weirdly anti-Semitic territory when given the opportunity. Speaking of anti-Semites: Marx! After the rumination, Jonah reads from a great Commentary piece on the anti-capitalist tendencies of medieval antis...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 350
Jim Geraghty, National Review ’s esteemed purveyor of punditry and “Morning Jolt” mastermind, joins Jonah today to become the Remnant ’s first 11-time visitor (his very own Episode 11, if you will…). The pair explore the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic, including recent rumblings that the virus might have originated in a Wuhan lab after all, before examining the Republican Party post-Cheney and ongoing confusion over masks. Should bats be anally swabbed? Are beets toxic? And will the Iris...
May 19, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 349
Watch out, Howard Stern, because the FM radio Remnant format is back for another nerdtastic broadcast. Jonah is joined once again by Ryan, a covert NBC operative working to undermine The Dispatch from within, Guy, resident Anglophobe and Mark Steyn impersonator who will soon be releasing his own album of old standards, and Nick, Jonah’s long-suffering research assistant who might be America’s only involuntary Hoosier. The quartet explores pertinent topics of the moment, including Israel, mask ma...
May 15, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 348
Historian Niall Ferguson returns to talk about his new book (with a glorious, darkly comic cover), Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe . As Sven from SNL might say, this episode has it all: monkey’s paw swag-bags, the phrase “Hunnish data,” and the frighteningly named “three-body problem.” Allow Niall to explain the human tendency to prepare for one disaster scenario while another hits us square in the jaw, the reason why “we may be forced by companies to do Zoom” even after the pandemic ends, and...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 347
Newly minted AEI fellow Klon Kitchen joins Jonah today for an uber-wonky discussion of foreign policy and cybersecurity. The pair explore how the U.S. should respond to recent cyber attacks, the merits of Section 230, and the distinction between dumb and smart hawkishness in national security. Should we revive letters of marque? Can Jonah ever discuss China without cursing Tom Friedman? And will Klon’s love of all things canine lead him to join the fabled pantheon of Remnant regulars? Show Notes...
May 11, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 346
The Ruminant returns to its usual format today after last week’s drive-time diversion, as Jonah is once again placed under the unsettling eyes of several silent spectators. After exploring the history of American censorship and the current state of free speech, Jonah dives headfirst into the ongoing Liz Cheney controversy and lingering nuttiness of Donald Trump within the GOP. Will Josh Hawley ever cease to irritate? Is morality hardwired into babies? And why do the women in Jonah’s life all hav...
May 08, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 345
The Remnant returns to normalcy today with one of Jonah’s favorite guests: the illustrious Chris Stirewalt. The pair engage in pop culture-infused punditry, focusing on the GOP’s internal war between MAGA advocates and Liz Cheney supporters and America’s supposed entry into a new Progressive Era under President Biden. Prepare to be bedazzled by Chris’ peerless Sebastian Gorka impression, the raw craziness of Donald Trump, and Jonah’s secret history as an adolescent ice cream vendor. Show Notes: ...
May 06, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 344
Jonah flies solo on the week’s first Remnant , as he tries out a format that seeks to provide the footnotes to some of the most commonly landed-on items from the program’s bingo card. On this first explainer, Jonah tackles the straw man and frequent leftist punching bag called social Darwinism, and whether or not such an ideology ever even existed in the first place. Do any conservatives actually believe this stuff? And how did the tables turn on libertarians to such a degree that the most laiss...
May 04, 2021•46 min•Ep. 343
In the words of a great album, “How are we feeling out there? How’s your drive-time commute? I need a saga - what’s the saga?” This weekend’s Remnant is less Ruminant -y than usual, as the Greek chorus that has silently watched Jonah during these recordings for the last few episodes finally speaks up. That group includes Ryan, the newest addition to The Dispatch ; Guy, noted Mark Steyn impersonator; and Nick, Jonah’s long-suffering research assistant. In this imitation of a kinda-crude FM radio ...
May 01, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 342
